Emergency Appeal: S.O.S. "Save Our Seniors"

Since August 2003, thousands of elderly and disabled refugees have lost Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a life-sustaining public assistance program that provides basic monthly support to people who are age 65 or older, disabled, or blind.

In 1996 Congress passed a welfare law which imposed severe restrictions on legal immigrants’ access to public benefits, including a cut off of SSI benefits for refugees after they have been in the U.S. for seven years. The seven-year limit was presumed to allow enough time for refugees to naturalize, after which they would have continued access to this means-tested benefit. Due to lengthy bureaucratic backlogs and security checks, however, many refugees have been unable to complete the citizenship process. Individuals granted political asylum face a backlog of up to 15 years to get their green cards, the required first step toward citizenship. Others, such as the elderly, find the challenge of learning English too difficult and cannot pass the naturalization exam.

Those most affected by this crisis are Russian-speaking Jewish elderly.

In all, between 2004 and 2010, an estimated 48,000 individuals will be at risk of losing their SSI. Of this number, it is estimated that 20,000 will be Russian-speaking elderly from the former Soviet Union, the majority of whom are Jewish.